


Met in the Middle

by jenni3penny



Category: Lie to Me (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 20:54:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4934947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Because he's waiting for her to see whatever it is he's done and he can't help but look like an ashamed child and a smugly proud reprobate at once. Which, really, isn't all that odd a combination when it comes to Lightman." Callian, by way of puzzle pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

In a manner that is supposedly unconscious, she tips her head the opposite direction of his, leans like a perfect fit to his gawkiness. It is an unspoken and gutsy (for her and her cautious nature) invitation for him to fit his mouth to hers and find whatever completion she can possibly offer him. It's an anniversary of movements, one she makes over and over again, one that marks the finer moments of their tenured friendship. He _knows_ that. He knows it's a movement that she's made before and will continue to make because she's been making it since days (maybe months, more likely years) before her divorce. It's a movement she makes more often when they're alone than in the company of their colleagues. It's a definitive shift that started right round when he started quite obviously pretending not to notice Alec's lies – despite the fact that she knew (that he knew), he knew (that she knew), Alec subconsciously knew (that everyone knew), and bloody hell – even Torres knew it right off.

It's sure as hell not unconscious though, much as Foster'd like him to think it is and much as both of them would like to pretend she doesn't mean to make herself quite so very available to him. Much as he'd like to pretend she doesn't realize that she's offering him every little thing he wants but doesn't dare reach for yet. She intentionally makes that movement along with the splayed shift of her hips (which are a couple of symmetrical curves he's mentally mapped more than once in a hundred Blue Moons).

She angles toward him, opening the front of her body and baring her throat with that proud high jaw and her head tips to make a puzzle piece that he's sure, damn positive, he could fit into... if ever he could shave off some rougher edges, maybe shear off the damaged and worn in bits of himself. He knows when her thumb rubs the jutting of her pelvic bone and her slender fingers spread down the stretch of her thigh that he cannot mash what he is up against her clean ( _immaculate, isn't she?_ ) edges yet.

Wouldn't fit right now, would he?

It'd be the two pieces that you force together because they're just near close enough and you're losin' your patience but... picture'd be off, yeah?

Can't puzzle land and sky together unless you've found the horizon, the median line.

“Sounds like you already have.”

He blinks roughly, shakes off the realization that someone is answering what he'd half thought was only rattling through his head. “What now?”

Right, in a bar. Having a drink, same old bar. Same bartender.

That annoying(ly cute) one with the big wide eyes and the near Natural ability to tell him that he's in love with his best friend. Right, like that isn't an obvious one, tell us another, Natural. Psssh. Most good bartenders learned to read people right quick - had to, force of habit, self service, business savvy. This girl'd learned people. Maybe it was work, maybe it was home, maybe it was just time and exposure to base human nature.

“You said you can't fit the sky and land pieces together,” the familiar face leans closer and the girl that owns it shrugs at him bemusedly, “not unless you find the horizon. From the way you talk about her... sounds like you already have.”

The bartender looks at him with that ' _duh, Dad_ ' look that Emily gapes at him sometimes and he instantly stops thinking of her as all that pretty after all. Though, she is– but in a simple and round faced way, not the way some women try to force a face of pretty over their own insecurities. Sad and lonely looking, though. Something echoes off her that says she internalizes every little bit of life. Got interested brown eyes and a lilt to her words that sounds more southern than their current location.

She is verging near a Natural though, this one.

Got a potential that interests him... and a stubborn quality that ups the ante of the game.

Cal studies her over the bar, the way she's crossing her arms in front of her breasts to block a view down the buttoned shirt but still leaning toward him, openly giving him her attention, her opinion. She finds him safe (especially when he spends his time talking about Foster) and therefore uses him as a distraction, as a deterrent to the other men in the bar. They won't harass her half as much if she's leaned into a conversation with a man who looks less like a doctor and more like an inked-sleeves-rolled-up and smug smiling son of a bitch. They've had this conversation before, nothin' new. He likes this bar because of this bartender in particular and he likes this bartender because she likes to play this game with him but more out of interest and an oddly endearing affection than flirtation.

And he slicks his tongue on his lips as he shakes another back and forth of his head in argument, hand lifting between them as he lounges farther away from her. “What's that mean? Way I talk about her?”

“Same way you always talk about her,” she laughs her way off the bar, pressing away as she straightens her shoulders back and waves her fingers up behind her shoulder. “Need me to call her?”

Cal sighs, littering a glance across the empty glasses she's pushed aside rather than cleaning up so that she can less than subtly remind him exactly how much he's had and that, yeah, it's too much for driving home now. “Had a bit much, have I?”

“You're _way_ over your limit, Doctor Lightman.”

Kudos to her for having that name on the tip of her tongue, ready to wield it should she find necessary cause. She's cautious _and_ nervy, prepared.

“Well, been a hell of a day.” He launches himself up onto the edge of the bar, wedging onto crossed arms as he watches her head toward the phone that's hooked on the wall and the little book she keeps protectively jammed between the register and the framing of the mirror. “Got 'er number back there? Really?”

She's in the process of rolling her eyes at him as she reaches for the book and cuts him back a wry look at once. Brow arch. Pursed lips. His feigned surprise doesn't trip her an inch – good girl. “She left her card last time. You know that.”

He... didn't actually. Not consciously. He hadn't known it in the way she implies.

“Naw, just a cab, love.”

“She won't be mad, ya know?” Two things, at the least: she's honest and she's right. That doesn't make the suggestion feel any better to his tightened chest, though. “She isn't. When she comes.”

“Cab's fine,” he tells her as he avoids the way she looks at him as though he's a bloody coward. Which, sure, yeah, in this particular case maybe he is. However, it's none much of her business, now is it? “Wouldn't fit yet, ya know?”

“You should just let me call her.”

“Oi.” He leans himself swaying back into the bar, a finger lifted in her direction as he tries not to laugh at her sturdy and surprisingly resilient return stare. “No match-makin'. Just cuz I tell you what comes in and outta my head sometimes doesn't mean - ”

“That she's your horizon line?”

That she is. Doesn't make a damn bit of difference at the moment, though.

Not when the only person in the world he can't seem to share that tidbit of information with is the woman in question – and he's semi soused.

“Right. Yes.” His hands lift and aim into his chest as he steps back far enough from the bar to wave over his barely straight standing position. “But I'm still in the Northern Hemisphere now, aren't I?”

The bartender cocks him a look that's more teenage girlish rebellion and snark than truth, but it smacks about the same when she opens her mouth in rebuttal, “Doubt she'd mind you taking a trip farther south.”

Now that's a pretty picture to paint in his head (damn her). Awfully pretty.

Like he hasn't taken that mental vacation often enough, traveling down the entire luxurious length of that woman in his head.

“You really just say that? That's cheeky.” Cal lifts an accusing finger in her direction and circles it around a bit as they share a mirrored smirk. “Little mouth, aren't ya?”

“It's true.” She smiles victory into the slow dip and rise of his eyelashes as he accepts the accusation and doesn't deny its veracity. “Buy you another if you let me call her.”

He merely shakes his head against the tempting offer, a momentarily flash of better judgment overcoming the want of drink and something finer to, uh, dine on. “What I tell ya? Huh? Cab.”

“Equator's awfully warm this time of year, Doctor Lightman,” she teases at him and he knows that she saw his own mental argument and that alone sobers him a little – the idea that he so easily let a not-even-Natural read something like that off him. “Ya know, the median line? Mid level between the two Tropics?”

“How much do you make here, huh? Minimum wage and crap tips?” he deflects as he leans into the back of the nearest bar stool, wedging his chin down onto crossed arms as he folds forward.

Cheeky, as he's now mentally dubbed her, bends forward into his leaning and her hair makes a delightful forward shift that reminds him instantly of someone else. “I don't want your job offer, remember?”

“Right. Turn me down every time.” Cal shrugs his shoulders looser as he downs his face, rubbing his chin into the muscle of his forearm. “Can't really pay ya anyhow. Foster'd kill me for bringin' in another mouth to feed. I mean, m'not Fagin, am I?”

She's heading for the phone, sarcasm slicking her tone, “Pro bono work, huh? That's icing on the cake, isn't it?”

“She loves cake,” he lifts his head dazedly into the response, fingers waving around on their own. “Oddly enthralled with sugars, that one.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Hey, Doctor Foster.”

That ungrateful little pisser. That sneaky, sweet-faced, too smart for her own goddamned good, wicked little woman had gone and ratted him out anyhow - and he isn't at the giddily fun drunk stage anymore. It's not funny, despite the fact her face is laughing across the bar in response to his mortified silence. It's a fuckin' tragedy waiting to happen if you ask him for the truth of it - because he's not gonna be able to help himself _from_ himself at this part of the game.

“What'd I tell you?” Cal points the question angrily in her direction before even answering it himself, shaking his head. “Told you a cab.”

The beautiful tragedy itself is actually the learned trace of her fingers from the middle of his back and down the exaggerated curve of his slumping, the way the tickling softness of the touch has his body ramming straight on the stool as she curves into the side of him and utterly wrecks what's left of his senses.

Why's she smell more like, well, _her_ , than usual?

Why's she gotta smell so bloody warm and heady and wholesome at once?

“Thank you,” Gillian offers gently over the bar, her palm marking flat on his lower back as she pushes him straighter into a grown-up's posture rather than the drunken slouch. “He owe anything? Tab?”

The twenty-something gives her a shrug as she starts to clear a plethora of glasses from off his right side, “Nope, he's settled.”

He snorts derision between the two of them, letting his head loll onto his palm and his elbow near dent into wood with swaying weight, “Cheeky here owes me another for bein' sneaky and callin' in the cavalry.”

She has a way of innocently ignoring his bitterness with an equal proportion of sweetness.

(Which is just one of the reasons that he tries not to touch her with it too overly often.)

Probably the various sugars she downs, despite his teasing, actually...

Her lashes look forgivingly soft as she blinks a bemused smile over the drunken sight of him. “Hi.”

“Told her not to call you.” Cal intentionally shifts sidelong in the stool seat as he slides a considerable cash tip onto the bar, leans up rather than away and catches the way her jaw circles before she downs it so that she can watch his eyes. “Cab woulda done.”

“Fancy meeting you here too,” she agrees as her hand scrubs warmth against his back and then leaves him, not far as she reaches for the way he's slacked his jacket along the chair's back.

He lets her make the movement away from his intrusion on her space, watches her go as she steps back and lifts the fabric up from behind him. She's got a jacket that costs probably 'bout as much as his car cinched over what looks like and sweater and jeans and of course she's wearing those heels that make her just taller than him. Sure and of course she'd show up with superior vertical leverage when he's already skunked.

The hair along her neck is damply spiraling on the sides of her throat and he blinks his lids lower, realizing he's staring at it as he steps from the stool and not much caring. Foster doesn't play fair sometimes (which, actually, he especially likes) – doesn't give him more than in inch of rope for hanging. And most especially when he's obviously interrupted at-home-down-time. Double, maybe triple, especially when he's interrupted a bath.

One that has her damp and smelling like minerals and ozone and heat and fucking sweet comfort.

He blatantly lets himself survey the entire length of her as he swings himself backwards toward the door, trying to press the smile down between his lips as she follows slowly, patiently, in that perfectly unflappable Gillian way. “Hey, Foster?”

She looks more amused than he expects she should, her arms wrapped against herself as she slowly places one precise and heeled step in front of the other, “Hmmm?”

“What's the average temperature on the equator?” Can't help his hand waving between the way she's got her arms tucked under her breasts and her hips are slowly swaying him to death as he back pedals for the door. “Western hemisphere.”

“I'm sure I don't know,” Gill murmurs, tucking his coat tighter clutched into her ribs as the rest of the fabric falls loose over her arms.

“C'mon, Gill.” Cal steps forward instead of back on an unchecked gamble, leaning into the supposedly relaxed gait she's got and forcing her to stop abruptly into his chest. “What is it?”

Right, she never gives him an inch - unless she's feeling playful, happy, amused. She's been a bit short on playful lately... It's there, though. Something's got her humor tweaked and she's loosely relaxed enough to let him taunt her into a game or five. Cheeky Girl was right, though – she never did seem all that angry about having to grab him up. She never complained about being his speed-dial, never did tell him to call someone else his back-up plan.

“What are we really discussing right now?” her voice is a murmuring warmth as she cocks her head in _that_ damn infuriating way, watching how his glance is purposefully dallying down the front of her. Play-time it is, all right. Because she smiles wryly as she realizes she's not getting an answer to her question. “Daily mean is around eighty.”

“Quite warm then, yeah?” He lifts his jaw into hers and waits for her to draw back but, Round One to Gillian, she stays blocked up still.

“Cal?” If she could hear her own whisper the way he hears it then she'd have a field day sorting through the intonations, the subtle hushing, something more intimate than they're usually allowed (than she usually allows herself). “What?”

“Just checking.”

Can't save himself from backing down.

It's become habit now, really...

So maybe she wins the second round too (and he lets her do it), because he leans his steps away from her and shoves the weight of his body into the door, swinging it open for her despite the watching of the rest of the patrons. His hand aims her through it as he shrugs off his retreat and nods her out onto the sidewalk. Cal follows after her, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he notes how she tightens his coat into her stomach. She's shielding her bare hands against the chill as she takes a lean to the right and smiles back at him. The hesitation of her steps lasts only long enough for him to let up an unrealized laugh, the door shushing shut behind him as he leans along her side and follows the turning way she heads for her car down the block.

“This girl doesn't want to work for you.” She's shaking her head in perturbation but it's tempered, more weary humor than actual frustration. “Why can't you leave her alone?”

“Cuz she makes ya jealous.”

“No, she doesn't,” Gill casts over him as she keeps her steps agile and quick, her eyes brightening a private humor in his direction.

“No,” he admits in a surprised breath, huffing out as he wedges his elbow up into her side and matches their steps, pantomiming the steady grace of her movements, “she doesn't. Why is that?”

“Because you think she has natural potential. You wouldn't so much as leer at her.”

Got a point, really. And that point is that she can sure as hell tell exactly when he's hooking in a woman and play sniping with an observant bartender is far from it. Makes him stop still on the sidewalk and refuse the next few steps, watching her hips and on up her spine as she realizes that he's no longer in step beside him, her body turning half back.

He can see her car and he can see some sort of end coming for this dual mischief and he realizes that the entire point of going to the bar may have been just to find her curling his coat into her body and staring at him as the temperature drops around them and her eyes just get lighter and lighter and lighter from blue toward clear.

“I was right with Torres.” He shrugs his shoulders up as his head involuntarily swings back and forth in a sad defensiveness, a slight ache vibrating up behind his eyes as he realizes he's starting to sober a little more and earlier than he'd like. “Why can't you be on my side in this?”

“I am on your side,” Gill breathes out tiredly as she leans away from him farther, carefully stepping onto the street and toward the driver's side. “So get in the car before you land yourself a restraining order.”

“Takin' me home?” he asks with a leering tease, dropping a glance down her before grinning his way back up to her laughing eyes. “Em's at her mum's. I could pub crawl if I wanted.”

“Do you want to?”

If the options are stumbling his way from one pub to another or sparring a little longer with her...

Well... hell. “No.”

Gill shakes him a beleaguered smile as she steps into leaning along the side of the car. “Cal... get in the car.”

“Shotgun.” He juts up his jaw at her, trying not to swallow at her blink of confusion.

“You're the only - ”

“Spare bedroom.” One of his hands lifts to waggle between them, head lifting higher at her, “I call shotgun.”

The smile she shoots over the car is genuine – at least, bleedin' Christ, he hopes it is. Because it makes her look glorious and damn radiant in otherwise sallow street lighting. “On my spare room?”

His hands open with wide questioning as he watches her over the roof, voice spitting accusatory regardless of whether or not he wants it to – got a mind of its own, sometimes. “Got someone else in there?”

Her head tips on him again, eyes narrowing dangerously as she tugs at her own door handle. “Cal, get in the car.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Shoes.” She murmurs it just loud enough to hear but he toes at one roughly, legs scrabbling as he shucks them off the end of her spare bed like he's just been patiently awaiting the reprimand. The thunking follows shortly after and he slacks his back entirely into the mattress, head tilted inches from the pillows. One of his hands lifts against his face, wiping slowly down tired features.

“Why wouldn't someone barely makin' enough to keep clothes on her back want to work at a company so prestigious it's got my name on it, huh?”

Gillian purposefully keeps her face clean of reactions, ignoring his smug tone even as she knows that somehow, in his head, the commentary is made of some sort of self deprecation. Her fingers nudge into his shoulder, the other hand lowering a mug of coffee in his direction as she draws a knee up and sits along the edge of the mattress. Her eyes follow the slow way he takes the mug even as he shoulders closer to her nearness and lets his head rest onto the folded up leg. He doesn't drink it – not that she actually expects him to take a swallow. Making it was an effort in futility, sure, but she feels better having provided it. Even if he is just balancing the mug into the center of his chest as he rubs the back of his skull against the flex of her knee.

She shrugs and tugs a pillow lower, offering it under him and watching as he lifts his head up just enough to sniff at the steaming drink but grunt dismissal at her attempt to caretake. “Maybe she's happy where she is, Cal.”

“Wrong.” His head drops back against her leg nearly violently and she realizes that it's sheer frustration in his voice, confusion and annoyance.

“Lacking in confidence?”

His shoulders make a nudging against her as he considers the suggestion, his body relaxing again now that she's taking part in the conversation and offering suggestions. “Possibly.”

He can't piece it together, this particular mystery of a girl, and it's absolutely driving him maddened. It's a puzzle he doesn't have all the pieces for and while he's sort of adorable in how physically he shows his ire, it's got his eyes swirled dark. She realizes it's something for him to fixate on, more likely. An aside that he can pick and piece at when his brain needs to be distracted and his head needs a focal point for its aggression (one that isn't his daughter or her or their employees).

“Maybe she just doesn't like you,” Gillian offers mildly, letting a tease into her tone as she finally just takes the mug from his hands and sips at it herself.

“Also wrong.” He follows her movement with an accusatory wave of his fingers. “Uses me as a protective foil with other men in the bar. Like an alpha.”

“Like a father?”

He hisses a feigned pain in her direction, wincing onto a half smile as his eyes dip thinner. “Guilty.”

Gill sets the coffee aside after another swallow, realizing how dusty the bedside table is as she lets her spine go loose into the headboard, lets him watch the movement without comment. “Maybe she just doesn't find what we do all that interesting.”

“Incorrect again. She plays the game. She's interested.” Cal turns his cheek into her leg so that he can still trap her with a glance should he feel the need to see her reaction play out. It's a habit she's not sure he realizes – that he can't keep from studying her face. She trends toward blaming it on his job and not at all the fact that maybe he just enjoys looking at her.

Her smile rises on its own and regardless of his watching, she can't stop it from evolving, widening and warming over him. “And you like it when people play with you.”

“Doesn't everyone?” The jeering is lusty and intentionally pointed and she just rolls her eyes because that's the next step in this game – the one they play that nobody else gets to take part in.

“What was all that nonsense about the equator?” She pries at him, tucking the fabric of his shirt into her fingers and pulling because she knows that he's mapping the proximity and duration of her touches, that he's made a study of her for too long not to notice.

“Dunno how we got there from the horizon line.” He's doing his best to ignore the touch, though. He's doing his best to just stay still against how lightly she strafes her fingers from the fabric. “Two different things but she connects them in her mind, makes them one geographical position. Why is that?”

“You still drunk?”

“Lil' bit,” Cal grins it up at her sharply but blinks as she starts to shift from him, his head bearing down with pressure to still her. “Where you goin'?”

“Nowhere.” She leans back into his questioning, letting her fingertips press his shoulder and still there in an unspoken agreement to stay.

“Told her you're the sky.” It's whispered into the open space of an unused bedroom like it's nothing for him to say such things, it's known and accepted and perfect in this place.

“Why?” Gillian asks as her fingers stroke his shoulder.

“Well, it'd be silly to make myself the sky.” He's shrugging that same deprecation, lolling his head against her leg as he feigns a tone of humor that doesn't well entirely down his throat. “I'm the grounded one here, aren't I?”

“You're the drunk one, actually.”

He frowns away her teasing, continuing an explanation she didn't necessarily ask for but he obviously needs to phrase in the quietness of her extra bedroom. “But, see, you take two pieces of a puzzle, a landscape, say. One's sky and one's not, right?”

She lets her smile widen into the hushed and patterned falling of his voice, the way the explanation is sleepy but cautious at once. “Okay.”

His head shifts farther toward her fingers and she meets the movement with a sure touch, catching along his ear and tracing around it while he leans into the fullness of her hand.

“You could maybe wedge 'em together, make 'em fit.” And he keeps his eyes closed as he lays his cheek against the flat of her palm, his stubble gritting but warm. “But the picture would be wrong. It'd be off.”

This softness in him only comes intermittently, usually (suprisingly) exactly when she needs it.

He's better at reading her than he thinks he is – because she's pretty sure she does need it this time.

For all his talk about her being his blind spot, his unreadable and untouchable... he pegs her more often than even he realizes.

“Unless they meet on the horizon line.” Gillian offers gently over the way he's managed to curl his head tighter into her, lets her thumb rub under his ear. “Once you have the horizon, the picture is easy.”

“Knew I liked that brain of yours,” he mumbles into her touch. “S'very sexy brain.”

A throaty sound of agreement comes off her throat, “I know.”

“But see, I referenced it as the median.” There's still a lucid annoyance at the girl's flat out denial breaking through his buzz, rising past his sleepiness as he sighs. “Which, in turn, had her brain connecting it to the equator. She's linear. Calculating. Precise.”

Something tugs at her, tweaks her attention as she pulls his head back up so that he's leaned back against her thigh and she can rasp her knuckles down his cheek. “You asked me for the average temperature at the equator.”

“In this hemisphere.”

She studies the tenseness in his face, can still hear an echoing of how tentative his voice has become in the last few minutes. “You wanted to know how warm a reception you'd get if you - ”

“Eighty degrees is - ”

“Especially warm, Cal,” her voice is much quieter than she means it to be but in all actuality... it doesn't matter when it's with him. He slowly takes her tones into him when they're this soft, swallows them without reaction or accusation or judgment.

It's not her voice that has the both of them shocked still – it's her fingertips brushing his parted lips.

She paints her touch to the corner of his mouth and then along his cheek and his body sharpens on a sudden jolt as he blinks at her.

“I know.” His eyes wince thinner as his tongue ghosts against his lips and then he's blinking with a shade of concern. “Had a bit to drink, Gill.”

She can only manage to nod at first, letting her glance follow her fingers as she traces an uneven pattern along the stubble on his jaw. “I know.”

“Didn't mean for her to call you.”

A full body wince, barely emitted and nearly contained, has her fingers curling into a closed palm beside his temple, “I see.”

“Glad she did, though.” He amends quickly, lifting up a smile from the way he's still ridiculously cuddled into her leg and reveling in their closeness. “Cheeky shit.”

Modest surprise touches heat over her face and she ignores the urge to hide it. Not like he doesn't see every inch of it written all over her anyhow, even if he is still buzzed by the looks of his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he waffles the response back quickly, reaching up for the knotted tie that's comfortably low along her waist, letting the backs of his knuckles brush the softly battered fabric. “These are very fancy pants for just lounging in. With a very fancy fastening system.”

The patented Lightman Deflection – it always has a sort of unfettered whimsy to it.

Well, that or malice.

She neglects telling him that they were Alec's as she smiles at his tone - but that they're so damn worn in comfortable that she and her especially good divorce lawyer would have Shock and Awe fire-bombed all over her ex-husband had he tried to make them one of the assets he retained post marriage.

His fingers are focused and tugging on the knotted and ratted ties with all the lacking grace of an autistic five-year-old. “Cal.”

“Sorry you had to come.”

He isn't, actually, all that sorry about it. Were he really sorry that she was the phone call someone made to take care of him then there'd be more sadness or regret in his voice than there is. As it is, his voice is just made up of an intimate softness, one that implies he realizes it's late and she'd been relaxed and, yeah, he was the reason she'd had to put down her book, crawl out of the tub, and drive out to fumble his drunk ass into a car. The rest of his tone is a barely hidden pride and a sway of affection. The combination of the two making her sigh into the remembrance that, in broader terms, Cal Lightman was a smug son of a bitch who took repeated advantage of the fact that she would do _anything_ he actually physically _needed_ in order to make sure he safely put his head to rest at night.

If he was sorry for anything, it was the fact that he couldn't help himself, couldn't stop needing her to be that phone call over and over again.

And, to be fair, she's not really all that sorry for reprising the role...

“I always do,” she murmurs as she stops the fidgeting of his fingers, laying them flat underneath her own and pressed against her leg. “Don't I?”

He refuses to look at her but his head makes a marginal thrust against her, weighing the words that just barely make it past his usual posturing and Must-Not-Love-Gill-Out-Loud filter (which, ironically, seems to be the _only_ filter he has). “Point of the apology, in'it?”

“My choice, though,” Gill sighs off slowly, letting the words near his head as she wipes off his knuckles and revels in the way his body relaxes into her acceptance of a near decade's shared guilt. “Isn't it?”

“Still my rock, darling?” Now, that's shame in his voice, apologetic sorrow as he looks up at her like a legitimately contrite gentlemen, utterly distant from his usual demeanor. “Still my Gill-braltar?”

She can't help from laughing and finds his smile is nearly as sharp as the snort she lets off as she shoves lightly at the side of his head. “That's it. No more horrible puns before daylight.”

“You thought it was funny.” He's rubbing the back of his head deeper and harder into her leg but his eyes shut as he sways a little back and forth. “Fess up.”

“I was placating you,” she tells him softly, watching his face relax as his entire body weighs heavier into the bed. “Go to sleep.”

 

* * *

 

 

She can tell he's been in her office before she even sees the mess he's left strewn along the top of her desk and it's not because of any particularly reason or subconscious cue or anything else of the sort. It's because he's standing at the door of his inner office, head ducked and hands stuffed strangely in his pockets, as though he absolutely needs to control them still. Because he's waiting for her to see whatever it is he's done and he can't help but look like an ashamed child and a smugly proud reprobate at once. Which, really, isn't all that odd a combination when it comes to Lightman.

Gill keeps her eyes on him as she uses one hand to shove open her office door, a mug of coffee lifted high with the other as a half smile twitches at his lips. “What did you do?”

“May've been a bit bored.” Cal's shoulders sway him farther back against the door frame, his head finally lifting back and against it as his hands stuff deeper into his pockets.

“Needed some educational entertainment.”

The fact he's keeping himself still is so suddenly strange to her, somewhat worrisome.

He's controlling his body as he waits, clamping himself still until she's seen whatever it is he so obviously wants her to see.

“So you mess around in my office?”

Deftly he gives her a look of confused innocence and were she anyone else it may have actually seemed genuine. “Crossin' a line, am I?”

She ignores the rest of the act as well as the digging implication he's made, turning her weight into the door so that she can swing it open and disregard him all together. Ignoring Cal's antics is generally the only way she can actually get any work done, though even she'll admit she can't help playing into them sometimes. Because they're... fun. He's fun. He's brightly adorable at times and she can't keep herself from falling into the (un)intentional trap of his silliness. Not that just silliness explains why he's managed to dump what looks like an entire puzzle across the top of her desk and left the pieces scattered from keyboard to picture frames to the chair and onto the floor. And, good God, did he have to get them _everywhere_? The image of him laughing maniacally as he tossed them around her office like a cartoon villain flashes through her as she stares over the mess.

“Cal.” It whines out of her a little as her shoulders drop.

He is such a child sometimes. Such an unapologetic little shit.

“Well, at least look before y'skin me.” Maybe not completely unrepentant, because he seems near shy and tentative, his voice lowering into that dusted range of curious but cautious honesty as he flits a glance past her and through the glass of her office windows. “Y've cleaned up bigger messes, love.”

The slow slagging way he presses away from the frame of the door keeps her eyes on him. His hands stay still stuffed in his pockets and his shoulders lowering leads her to watch his back as he uses the heel of his shoe to kick his own door closed. It's the reality of living a life that involves Cal Lightman, she muses – having the answer ahead without understanding its implication nor having heard the question.

Gill rolls her glance away from his now closed door and presses the weight of her body into her own, sipping at nearly forgotten coffee as she steps up along the front of her desk. A puzzle piece gets nicked under the edge of one shoe but she can't really care much about it as she unintentionally smiles, licking the coffee from her lips as she stares down on the center of the desk.

He's made an immaculate image in the middle of his own mess. Two puzzle pieces in the center of her desk, space circled around them before the rest of their brothers and sisters go scattering every which way and outward.

Sky and water, met in the middle, the two pieces perfectly fit together on the horizon line and staring happily at her.

Insufferably perfect (vehemently romantic) and inevitably impossible man.

But, regardless, he always has been exceptionally good at both messes _and_ puzzles.

And, really, she's always inexplicably loved that about him.


	2. Chapter Two

It's more than a month later and he's being intolerable with everyone. And she knows (reminds herself not to take it personally) that it really is with everyone. It's not just her, and it's just him, and he's so completely focused on the case that he walked himself into. So involved that Emily's ended up in her office just to get away from his frenetic mannerisms and sharded tone of voice, using her computer as she chews on Twizzlers at quarter past nine.

“What's that?”

Gill lifts her head from the study proposal that Loker had dropped on her desk before leaving, “Hmm?”

“The puzzle thing.” A half chewed Twizzler points toward the frame on her wall that holds just two puzzle pieces and Gill just grins as the girl aims a wave across the room. “What's it mean?”

“That's your father's way of saying he likes me sometimes.” She smiles unbidden at the memory of finding the pieces on her desk and doesn't even try to cover it, not with Emily. The girl is acutely aware of leaking emotions – she's always, always, been her daddy's girl.

Emily snorts a half amused and half bored sound into the room, kicking the chair back, “He likes you _all_ times, Gill.”

She says it as a benediction, like the end of an argument they didn't even need to have because both parties already know the end result.

Gillian nods a stare over her paperwork, not seeing much of any of the actual words. “I know, Em.”

“You do too.” The teenager is looking at her with such wide-eyed surprise that she has to swallow down a laugh that's gotten stalled up in her throat. “You _know_.”

Of course she does. She's known forever. He's not nearly as subtle as he believes.

He's a terrible liar sometimes, if it really comes down to it. Especially when fully facing her, especially when he speaks, most especially when it's her name.

She also knows... he's got to get to that realization and acceptance himself or he's going to destroy them.

Gillian gives the girl a tired but warmly loving smile, shrugging as she points at the nearly empty bag of candy and motions for the girl to share, “You are your father's daughter.”

“Why?” His voice crowds into the room but quietly and she's not quite sure how he's managed to sneak into her doorway when hours before she could hear every coming and going by the stinging of his tone. “B'cause she's prone to harassin' you after work hours?”

Gill just smiles wider into the commentary and the way he waves between the two of them, “Give 'er the sugar before she takes you hostage, Em. Pack up, yeah? Time to go home.”

His gaze skates off his daughter and rasps over her, an oddly unexpected calculated look claiming his face as he takes in the way she's curled onto her couch. His glance lingers on her shoes and the way she's left them lonely on the carpet before he smiles. She watches it encompass him as he swallows and jerks his head toward the door as if in offer of something, an implication that she's to join them. And she just blinks confusion back at him silently as Emily starts shoving textbooks back into her bag and grabs up the bag of candy, heading in her direction. Cal takes it from her gently before she manages to pass the border of the desk, let alone cross the office. His other hand aims back toward the desk and her books and Gillian studies the quirked way Emily just confusedly follows the silent order, her shoulders shrugging it off.

“Foster?” He intentionally deprives her of sugar, his hand calmly laying the candy back to the desk as he passes her a surprisingly affectionate look and exhales through his nose in a strangely still calmness. “You hungry, darling?”

It sounds so... silken and soft and promising. Calm and perfect and like a final acceptance.

He wouldn't _dare_ make an implication like that in front of his daughter.

Except... his daughter reads the (dis)honesty of the faces around her – just like him.

Or she judges events and moments based upon facts and evidence acquired – just like her mother.

Despite the fact that she's known this girl since she was gawky and too big in the doe-wide eyes for her little eight year old face... she's never taught Emily to hear implied duality in the tone of her father's voice. It would have been too unfair an advantage to give a precociously beautiful little girl who already had the man twice double wrapped around her little pinky finger.

He's got a tweaked half smile aimed in her direction, head cocked long into angling as Emily waits at his side, her bag tucked up on her thin shoulder. “Gill?”

Is she hungry? For food, for sweetness, for him, for sex, for the illusion (or possibility) of domesticity, for such a brilliantly beautiful child? He damn well knows the answer to that - every unspoken question. And he's a sneaky little bastard for all the implications made while his daughter watches and hears _nothing_ out of the ordinary between best friends. Damn him. Sometimes he's too good and damn him still. For being insufferable, for making her forgive him with just a few words, and (maybe, most of all) for offering everything with his daughter as innocuous and innocent and unrealized witness.

“A little.” She drops Loker's paperwork to the cushion beside her, blinks a glance to her heels and then back up to him. There's a millisecond in which his eyes widen out and then thin as he schools himself.

A grin curls his lips regardless of his attempt to stay passive and he huffs off a dumbstruck laugh, looping his arms against Emily's shoulders before nodding at the door. “Come on then. You too.”

 

* * *

 

 

They're dangerous to him in combination, he realizes (not that he hasn't known it all along). When together, the two of them create an unrealistic but oh-so-tempting softness of domesticity - but one with keen edges on it. Because neither of them let up on him at all while he's making dinner, neither while they're eating it and simultaneously teasing at every fault of his character and/or person. They make it seem like a tag-team event, really, mocking and loving him at once while eating and chatting and generally just being the two women in his life he'd purposefully stop breathing for...

And that realization is the one that stings – not that he's got a standing deathwish when it comes to keeping Foster safe, which is more than a bit obvious to the wide world – but that he's started to think of his daughter as a woman rather than a child. Terrifying, that is - and he's sure he'll find a way to blame both Zoe _and_ Gillian for it if given the time.

He grins into it, though, as he makes another pot of tea, listening to Emily rummage around in the hall closet while Gillian closes inside the border of the kitchen.

She's left her shoes layin' about somewhere in the house but he's never needed to hear her heels to know she's close. He's had the measurement of her nearness ascertained since the first step into her office, years before.

“You're stayin' for another cup,” he tosses it over his shoulder. “No makin' excuses, Foster. Just the way it is.”

He can hear the shrug in her shoulders just by the movement of the air in the room and it crackles on his spine like heat before dry lightning. “Hadn't planned to.”

Fuck, 'dangerous' is an understatement if he's honest with himself.

She's sheer uncalculated risk, she is.

And he never could stop placing bets without her at his shoulder, curbing his recklessness.

“To stay?” he asks tentatively.

“To make excuses.” Gillian corrects along his side, letting her body turn opposite his as her jaw angles over the kettle. “Besides, your daughter wants to work on a puzzle.”

“And where'n the hell'd she get that idea?” He squints a quick accusation in her direction, leaning forward into it to keep her from shying back as she turns her head.

The puzzle pieces themselves had been as far as he'd been willing to go weeks before. Far as he'd dared. And the fact that something about them has teased at his daughter's curiosity niggles at him, makes his shoulders crank up tighter as he blinks and watches Gillian's face stay still under his studying. After a moment she just shrugs at him, unwilling to bend into how clearly he's trying to draw information out of her. The two of them are too much a pair, too easily a partnership against his already admittedly crap resolve. The two of them in combination could, conceivably, twist and twine him into _anything_ they set their minds to and, well, if the very idea of that didn't terrify him he'd admit that he sorta loved (adored and plainly _craved_ ) the probability.

“She's incredibly observant, Cal,” Gillian explains softly, blowing out a breath of explanation as her hips sink her weight into the edge of the counter. “She saw it in my office. I didn't tell her much.”

Truth and a lie combined if he has to place a wager on it - because maybe she hadn't physically said much but, knowing Emily, knowing Gillian, she'd said just enough for assumptions to be made and ideas to start spinning about in the girl's head.

Which, no doubt, had led to his little girl being cheeky and wanting to play out a puzzle between the two of them while he's losing the last of the day's patience to how fucking delicious she smells so close to his shoulder.

“About the puzzle bits or whatever's goin' on behind your eyes, huh?” He shores up against the nearness of her by making implications, because if he knows anything, truly, about Gillian – it's that she's either going to wave him off or snag him in. And if he knows her entirely true (which he's fairly sure he does) she's in no mood to wave off any of his antics. She's in the mood to dig right back as he holds her glance. “Christ, they're pretty. Aren't they? What're you hiding back there, Foster?”

“Possible she saw both,” Gill admits quietly. “Probably both.”

He grins on a shrugging, pride in his voice as a smile washes on her to match his own, “She is her father's daughter, yeah?”

“You taught her everything you know, didn't you?”

“Well, not everythin'.” Cal lustily lowers as he leans closer into her space and watches the infinitely slow turning of her jaw closer to his. “Y'know what I mean.”

She can't help but roll her eyes at him, can't save herself from finding him impossible at random intervals. It's comfortable for the both of them, it's a breathing relief when the conversation is doubled between spoken truths and silent implications.

“I never taught her how to hear your voice.”

He snorts into a laugh, nodding doggedly as he considers how tragic it could have been had she been training a his little ten year old monkey (climbin' all over _every. little._ _thing_.) to hear weakness in her father's voice. By sixteen, near seventeen, he'd have been dead in the water in regards to authority of any sort... not that he isn't a bit anyhow. “Thank you for that.”

“I'm not promising that I won't.” And that's the truth, he knows. It's assertive and brashly honest and in-his-face contrary. “She deserves to know. Someday. I deserve to know... someday.”

“Gillian.”

A noise comes up her throat like she's already negating anything he could say to pause this moment, to stay the onslaught of truth that's inevitably about to come off her and he can't do a damn thing but watch her face as it falls out of her quietly but quick. “Things don't always have to be perfect to fit together, Cal. A perfect fit's the easy way out, isn't it? Doesn't actually take any work.”

“Gill - ”

“Unmotivated, isn't it?” her fingers follow the tenderness of her voice as she pulls at his shirt, tucking the fabric in her fingers as she breathes out through her nose.

He can't help the smile that twitches on him as she curls her hand tighter into his shirt and leans closer and clouds her smell up the side of his body just before she heat of her presses along his arm. “You implyin' I'm a lazy lout?”

“I'm implying that you're habitually stalling,” her knuckles rise up the front of him just to take a slide down the left of his chest, pressing on fabric and reactionary tension, “while you tell everyone in the world how much you love me. Other men, employees, clients, bartenders...”

Yes, sure, okay... she might have a point there. Possibly.

“But you never actually tell me, Cal.”

What, say the exact words out loud, all out and in a sound that she can pick apart and tear to shreds if she's in the mood? Trap himself into the fact she can hear everything in him just by the way of his words?

(Why in bloody hell isn't there a deaf spot equivalent to the fact that he cannot, sometimes, fathom how she really feels - about him, about anything)?

That's a risk he's terrified of, actually.

That she'd hear how much it is exactly that he loves her.

It's maybe the one bet he doesn't yet have the balls to place.

“Tell you I love you all the time, Foster.” It's not a lie, not really, regardless of his inability to look up at her.

Because he tries to tell her. At the very least, he tries to let it be bright and obvious, he tries to say it without having to say much. Because... he can't seem to force it out of his throat when she looks at him with those unreadable eyes, can't part with the words when she already knows them just by the way he looks at her. And he shouldn't have to say it, really. Should he? Doesn't he prove it enough? Doesn't he show her?

“No, Cal,” she leans honest (and obvious) sadness in his direction as she says it and he's not sure he's ever felt as broken down into pieces by her as he does when she blinks her glance down, “you don't.”

The loud rattle of a puzzle box precedes his daughter's voice just by a breath and he can feel the step back and fall of space between them like a trench as she leans into the room. “Gill? Still up for this?”

“Yeah, absolutely.” Foster's already deserting him for the innocence of his own daughter and he exhales as her voice takes on a masking sway of familiar teasing. “Your dad's making us some tea. Sound good?”

“Sure.” Em smirks as her brows come together, her eyes darting between them all too knowingly. “Ice cream too?”

“What? At your beck and call then, Princess?” he can hear the telltale weakness of his voice and it's damning, it's a fucking bright flag to his daughter's surreptitious study of their very movements. Or it would be, if Gillian had been her mother and she'd trained her from birth to hear every inflection.

But, she isn't her mother (and something small inside him blinds aching at that inherent truth). And Emily sees more than she hears - and she can see his face without having to really look. Little shit sees and knows and intuits too much for her own good - and she can't help but push and meddle and be _just like him_ , actually.

Emily backs toward the living room, the box hugged into her chest as Foster starts to follow her slow movement, the both of them leaving him to the tea kettle that's steaming up at his back. “Well, you did start our relationship by feeding me whenever I got the whim.”

A smirk cages his lips up as Gill shoots him another triumphant grin. “Got history on 'er side, doesn't she?”

Gill just half smiles, turning away from his watching as she moves away. “Ice cream sounds pretty good actually.”

 

* * *

 

 

He watches her at nearly two in the morning like it's normal and this prized picture is something he possibly deserves instead of having somehow fallen luckily into. Because watching Emily sleep is an indulgence that he's had access to for years and he's enjoyed the flat out innocence of her face while she dreams for her entire life. But having that comfortable stability in the background while also watching Gillian finish a puzzle in silence and sip at yet another round of tea? He's got to etch this image of her curled on the floor between his couch and coffee table into his brain somehow. He's got to engrave it somewhere because he's not sure it's likely to ever really happen again, not like this. Not with his daughter's hand curled so near her shoulder that they make a pair, they make something more like family than usual.

His head rises up off the break of his palm long enough to exhale, “Gillian?”

“Hmm?” The noise is throaty and full of patient warmth but she doesn't turn to him, instead studying the puzzle piece she's got between her fingertips before glancing down over what the two of them had managed to finish before Emily had slacked back sleepily on the couch.

“I do, darling,” he asserts an answer to the earlier conversation softly between them, his body slunken low in the chair as he watches her confidently press the puzzle piece into its place.

There's pleasure on her that is simple and clean and he feels his lips thin in a small reflexive smile just from watching its evolution. He isn't sure if the sheer victory in her smile is due to the puzzle or his almost admittance of her being, once again, all too right when it comes to him. Frankly, so long as that particularly crowing smile somehow traces back to this moment in the middle of his living room, he doesn't much care what the true impetus actually is.

“I know,” she agrees gently, a thoughtful and surprisingly patient look washing over her face as she lifts her head and then turns her eyes on him, “but someday I need to hear it.”

“Tryin',” he admits on an especially tight swallow, voice hushed quiet as he digs his knuckles into his temple and leans harder aside.

She blinks slowly, head tipping as though she's the one reading him (and he doesn't actually doubt that her ears are hearing him clear as crisp daylight). “Keep trying.”

“She's fine where she is,” he lifts his jaw into nodding over Emily's stillness, the way she's slacked out comfortably over the length of the couch. “She'll take herself to bed at some point.”

She calculates him, head tipping farther over the puzzle as she blinks into watching him stand, her eyes following his hands as he wipes against his jeans and then steps along her side. “And?”

“Well, dealin' with me must be exhaustin'.” Cal lets his fingers slick her hair behind her ear, lets himself fully embrace and enjoy the fact she's willingly allowing the movement. “Come on then.”

“You asking me to bed?” her voice taunts the cheeky accusation as though she thinks he'll brush it off – and maybe that brief assumption is exactly what goads him into stroking along her skin with sigh.

He catches her chin up higher with the break of his palm and lets his fingers find the weak softness along her throat as he shakes his head minutely, grazing his voice quieter as Emily just barely shifts in her sleep. “M'not askin', love.”

Her eyes widen into a slate shade of blue that looks simply delicious in the one lamp light that's still making shadows through the room, her head still as he bends over her whispering. “You usually don't.”

“So why start now?” Cal drops his other hand enough to catch at her forearm, giving her a tug and smirking into the astonished way she just follows into his urging, standing with a perplexed but bemused look on her face.

He leans again into her quietly interested watching, tags a throw blanket over his daughter's legs before catching her eyes again as he rises along the front of her and grips her tighter and closer.

No, he can't out with it just yet, can't take that risk.

There's only so far he can go in a night (a month, a year or ten) and, damn it all, he _is_ trying. “Come to bed, Gillian.”

“Cal.” She's moaning weak and it's suddenly as though they've traded proficiency, like he can hear everything but he's white blind to the surprise of her mouth hitting his so hard that he's startled at first, surprised by how strong her hands are in the front of his shirt. By how sure she is in that particular tip of her head and the flush of her hips into his as she nips his bottom lip between her teeth and, fucking hell, this is a kind of kiss he didn't even know she had stashed away. It's rough and near desperate and sexy in how promising it is as she digs the heels of her palms into his chest.

He'd always assumed he'd be the aggressor the first (if ever) time their mouths met outside of some silly act for a case or just of mere friendly affection... but she's the one slicking their tongues together and he's groaning his pleased amazement into her mouth. He's figured, since his first foray into her office at the Pentagon (primarily by balls out swagger and nimble paranoia) that if they ever, ever, got to this point... he'd be the one who pressed forward first. The adverse tricks his brain and his lungs up at once, jerks him back. His hands are suddenly flat palmed against her cheeks and he breaks her back just far enough that he can suck down a gulp of oxygen while he forces her head even to his.

Cal swallows hard, forcing air and hesitation and concern down his throat and deep into his lungs as they'll go. “Okay?”

He's asking her because he has no bloody idea what's okay when she's so unashamedly changing every fucking rule they've agreed to abide by for a decade. Where's her line now? Cause it feels like she's just blown it apart behind them. Her eyes widen and go brightly soft at once, pinkened and roughed up lips twitching just before she smiles fully and tugs tighter into his shirt.

“You're asking me?” she laughs the words forward, brushing them along his lips as his hands loosen their hold and let her lean closer. “I started it.”

“Y'did too.” Cal agrees as he studies how full her bottom lip looks, glories in the fact that she'd so invitingly let him nip at it. “Bit capricious of ya, Foster.”

Gutsy, his girl Gillian.

Gutsy and, surprisingly, wearing an impatience that looks a hell of a lot like wanting. Beautiful fucking _want_. He's absolutely astounded by the existence of desire on her in the moment – because he's never seen her let it unleash so easily across her face. Well, with the exception of some silly drunken or addled moments the two of them have shared when they probably shouldn't have.

Her brow arches as her voice drops dry. “Was it?”

Gutsy and minxy and deliriously sexy. Fucking hell.

“You comin' along then?” He doesn't necessarily give her an option not to, hands grasping onto her hips and driving her closer up the front of him before he takes a backwards step, clinging her with him as he draws them away from the couch.

“You know we're just proving Emily right?” Gill's voice is breathy humor as he groans a lay of kisses along her throat, arms both claiming around her as she minces her steps cautious in following, grasping up the fabric of his shirt to keep them balanced.

“True.” He snugs her closer, as though suddenly horrified that this is just some sort of lesson learning for him, trapping her up so that she can't turn this into an example of his sheer repetitive recklessness. “She'll be a pretentious shit in the morning, for sure.”

Her throat hums at him again and it's a sound he can't deny having always enjoyed. “Takes after her father.”

“Cheeky.” His knuckles draw her chin higher before he spreads his fingers out to raise her head and hold it there, pausing half in the hall just to suck along the side of her throat and enjoy the way her moan hums up under his lips and tongue. “Gill?”

“We're okay.”

It's the breathing assurance that he hadn't completely realized he'd paused for – but she had.

 

* * *

 

 

First truth: she's lucky they've even made it to the bed because, even while feeling all his age at two in the morning, when her legs had hooked round his hips he'd considered less than gently lowering her to the floor and diving between them on the hall carpet. He's also a bit short on both ends and he knows it and while she doesn't often tease him about it, it's possible that Gillian climbing him like he's a fucking tree coulda take them both down if his head hadn't been in the game.

Which, considering his blood flow had taken a southern detour, it wasn't, isn't.

Second truth: she kisses like a fucking sea siren but tastes sweet rather than salted.

Third truth: he's really, honestly, absolutely, unsure as to how he's already lost his shirt while she's still warmly dressed and leaning hard and forward in his lap.

Fairly sure he's gone and lost his belt too, actually. Au revoir little belt buddy, on your own now.

“How'd y'do that?” Cal groans it up into the wandering of her hands down his chest, watches the way she smiles selfish pleasure as she draws her head back and wipes the heels of her palms back up his skin.

Her palms go slowly following the curves of his shoulders as he winds her legs tighter around him, skimming fingertips up the undersides of her thighs before digging into the denim of her jeans and tugging for an answer. He rumbles another questioning noise up under her jaw, feels her laugh up her throat and through her nose as her fingers keep up their distracting tracing and touring of his shoulders. She strokes along his neck and the only response he can muster, the only counter offensive he can even come up with his to swipe his tongue along her throat before nuzzling near her ear.

“Tell me how you managed that, yeah?” he whispers on her as his his hands dig against her thighs and squeeze, leading her hips into tipping forward as she grinds farther into his lap. “Why'm I the half naked one?”

Fucking hell, the woman is... she's every secret she's never told him, curled into his lap and wrapping around him as she sluices both hands up the hair along the back of his head.

“The man who makes demands rather than requests doesn't get to ask pointless questions,” she warns hazily before raking her nails slowly down the back of his scalp, drawing a gritted noise up his throat as he sinks back into the tantalizing tracing onto his neck.

She so silkenly calm and achingly slow in her movements, like she's got unlimited patience and daylight isn't ever coming. Drives him itching mad and makes him feel comfortably lulled at once and his pulse is trying to pound fast or low and slow to match the stumble of his feelings.

Dear Heartbeat, Meet Gillian Fucking Foster.

“Christ, Gill.” He banks his head farther back into how calculatedly she keeps the movement scrolling up and down his scalp, her arms pressing into his shoulders as she watches over him. “Can I ask pointed ones then?”

He can hear the snort of amused approval come off her even as one of her hands lifts to brush his hair back but he's still surprised, eyes-shut-shocked, when she lays a tender kiss against his forehead, another above his left brow. “Provided they pertain to - ”

“What's under these?” Cal lets the interruption off breathily as he strokes his palms along her ass, voice smug with impertinence and a good throbbing of adrenaline as he pulls at the doubled layer of her pockets. “Now, I'll know if you're lyin', Foster.”

The look she passes him suddenly is broaching murderous, darkens her eyes even as she presses her lips still to block an inevitable smile in response to his cheekiness. He just grins in response, watching her face as she exhales through her nose and shakes her head as though he's a loss to all of humanity. Then she kisses him, lightly along his lips, and he can't help but drive it rougher. He can't help himself from pressing his tongue firmly between her lips and reveling in the taste of her mouth mashed against his as he curves his hands back to her waist and grips his palms around her. She patiently slows the kiss again, tipping her head in an infuriatingly perfect angle so that she can break the one kiss into two, five, seven before she's ribbing her teeth gently on his bottom lip.

“Tell me.” His fingers are plucking at the dark but satin fabric of her shirt, unable to stay still as he teases at her and tries to memorize the sultry darkness of her eyes. “Lace? Silk? Cotton? French cut, thong?”

“Cal - ”

“Nothin'?” He chips up at her on a grin, using the roll of her eyes and her feigned annoyance as a distraction to skid his hands up and stroke his palms along her breasts.

He lets both hands close around them, fingers light in their repetitive stroking as she arches into the movement and one hand latches onto his forearm loosely. His thumbs find her nipples through fabric and he pulls lightly on them, rubbing them into his fingers and simultaneously pinching as she reflexively digs against his forearm and a full shiver rivets down her.

“Cal.” Now that's a pretty way to say his name. Shame she's waited so long to put that much heat to it.

“I'm gonna find out, ain't I?” He runs his right hand slowly down the front of her, wiping along the expensive fabric so that he can press against her stomach and then tip his hand between her still clothed thighs. “Out with it, Doctor Foster. Thong?”

“You're incorrigible.”

And hard as a damn rock, not that he's complainin'. And she's more than just warm between the legs, hell... she's got pure heat cradling his hand as he strokes teasing touches up and down the inner seam of her jeans. Her first response is a large swallow of air and then she keens out a yielding sound as he keeps a circular up and down brushing against the crotch of her pants. Her hips are bringing her closer into each touch and he can feel her thighs tense against him as she catches on his shoulders and digs in for purchase.

She'll mark him up tonight, he has no doubt. She can't control how close she keeps digging him close any more than he can control the fact that he wants to feel how wet she his before he even gets her pants off her. It's a goal to reach for at the very least.

“French cut then.” He gutters out a groaned half laugh of amusement as he sideways studies her face, watches her lashes flutter lower before she realizes he's reading her reactions and stonewalls him blankly. “Silk or lace, love?”

Her head merely shifts back and forth, cheeks flushing pink as she brushes a slow and near innocent kiss along his lips.

Not gonna work this time – sure, she's his good girl, she's his pinnacle. Doesn't mean she doesn't have a bit of sharp on her edges. Always has, really. Part of the fun of loving her for so fucking long – waiting for those few moments of watching how utterly and surprisingly sinful she can be when so otherwise sweet and virtuous and gentle.

“Lace?” He times the question to the heavier pressure of his fingers, rubbing the denim inseam tighter into her and uncontrollably grinning into the wordless little moaning she makes as her head drops blushing forward into his shoulder. “Lace it is then.”

He can hear her suck in oxygen from along his collarbone, can feel her slick her tongue against her lips and graze his own sweated skin at once. He stills one hand just to take a tug at a nipple through silky fabric with the other, smirking into the whimpered sound she makes, half approval and half surprise. Cal nods his chin closer to her face, both hands still relentlessly owning on her as he rubs his nose against her cheek to draw her attention back.

“If you're so interested, why haven't you checked yet?” Her head carries back up on the challenging tone and he smirks into how controlled her voice is, her mouth rising on the stubble on his jaw. “Afraid you're wrong, expert?”

“That's it.” He groans his mouth nearer hers, taunting and ducking away from the kiss she tries to turn his way just before he tugs hard against her pant legs. “I'm testin' this theory right now. We'll see, yeah?”

She's laughing, full and throaty as he energetically flips her back onto the mattress, hands cradling on her thighs so that he can land between them as he aims for another kiss. He's entirely astonished by how easily she lifts her lips into the searching of his, by how loosely she flattens out her hips beneath him as he settles down low and drags the kissing from her mouth down her throat. Most of his weight is leaned into the palm that's pressing his sheets and the other hand is already loosening buttons down the front of her, working them impatiently as he lets his head lean into how playfully she keeps tugging on his ear.

Lace, definitely, if the dark bra curving on her creamy skin is any hint at what matches. And black. And, hell, had she planned this somehow? Had she known it in the early hours of the morning while picking out what underclothes might most be likely to make Cal Lightman a whimpering puddle of misfiring neurons? “Fuck... Foster?”

“Right here,” her whisper traces along with the tips of her fingers on his forehead just before she slopes her hand through his hair and pulls his face into her, watching as he takes the pressured hinting and skims kisses down her stomach.

“Makin' sure,” he wipes the words on her tensed stomach, stroking his hand along her side and then down the front of her.

“Did you think I'd gone somewhere?”

He takes a handful of denim and pulls, dragging down on it so that it loses its hold on her hips and she drops her hands to thumb under the waistband, letting him keep pulling them down as she lifts up from the mattress. “Thought maybe I was dreamin'.”

Her affectionate chuckle doesn't necessarily negate the fact that he may still actually be in a dream – but a legitimate first sighting of little lace knickers manages to remind him, cock first, that this is probably more real than imaginary.

“Bloody hell, Gill.”

Her fingertips are keeping the fabric high against her pelvis as he strips the denim off her, his glance focused on how gently she's got the thin and airy fabric plucked between her fingers. It makes her seem innocent, actually. Makes her seem charmingly adorable (yeah, fuckin' adorable) as she wiggles higher against the mattress and kicks the fabric into giving way to his tugging. She lets her leg catch along his hip and she slacks comfortably beneath him as he dumps her pants aside. He catches up under her knee before he realizes he's reached for her again and the sigh that breathes past her lips matches how deliriously happily she just wedges deeper into his bedclothes and lets him stroke the back of her knee.

He sees nothing – no deception, no lie. Absolutely _nothin_ '.

He sees only her pleasure and it simply, instinctively, terrifies him.

She's fucking stunning is what he sees if he accepts peripheral blindness and trusts this torture of tunnel vision when it comes to her. - because she's _always_ fucking stunning to him. And the fact that she seems so pleased to be right exactly where she is makes his lungs stutter still as he takes his fill of looking at her. He doesn't even need her naked yet to know that this is going to be slow to build and wickedly damn fast to end – because he can tease with the best of 'em, but he can't stall anymore. Not when she looks so pleasantly comfortable and at ease as her fingers reach against his chest and tap a silent questioning at his pause.

“You're a knockout, Foster,” he chuckles over her with a blink of shy embarrassment. “Been KO'd.”

“Oh, I'm pretty sure you've still got some fight, Cal.” Such an assured tone, so clearly positive that she's right, that she knows him, that she _knows_ he could participate in this particular moment for hours.

She's partially right, anyhow. Maybe not hours.

He's gonna need oxygen to circulate back to his brain at some point.

“Only ever been completely sure of two things, love.” His body leans into the way she's stroking against his chest, head dropping against her shoulder as he simply enjoys how welcoming warm she is as she hooks her legs back along him and cradles his weight heavier into her. “In regards to you.”

A sound of acknowledgment murmurs off her, “Enlighten me?”

“You'd never let me touch you this way. And you truly shouldn't anyhow.”

A snort of deprecation comes off her and instantly knots his spine still – not the reaction he'd been expecting, really. “I'm not _letting_ you do anything, Cal.”

Hello there, that tone of voice has some bite to it. Like a bite and a kiss at once.

He's sweetly offered up his lips and she's gone straight in for the throat, she has. And with teeth.

“Come again?” he taunts as his hand makes a particularly pointed swipe between her legs.

Her eyes darken farther as she skims her tongue over her lips and melts his mind at once. “I'm asking you to.”

The unforeseen screeched halt in his brain brings an uncontrollable flinch up with the lift of his jaw. And she's a hair smug in the way she's smiling at him as it happens, a bit haughty and with a sweet little coquettish smirk that says (oh, bleedin' Christ, thank you) Foster's got a twist of good old fashioned kink in her. He shoulda seen that one coming, really - if he's honest with himself. Hadn't he been the one to piece out that she wasn't anywhere near as good a girl as she portrays? This smile, this sensual and mischievous little hitch of the side of her mouth, it's got her lips quirked more to one side than the other as she lifts her fingers back along his forehead again and slowly traces his hairline with the shifting of a more relaxing smile. It's like a requiem somehow, that look of utter loyalty and affection she so easily wears. Got the grace and patience and still-water-calm to it that always, always, reminds him how long she's been at his side.

“You're not quite askin' either, love,” Cal murmurs as he lets another look linger down the front of her.

“True. More like telling.” Her hand is just as forthright as her tone, takes up against the back of his head and pulls down on him. “Make yourself useful, Lightman. I've been waiting a long damn time for this.”

“Have you then?” he chuckles as he rubs the back of his head into her palm. “Really?”

And she's so obviously patient with his teasing, so happily attuned to it. “Shut up and get to it.”

“Aye, aye,” he hums it suggestively under his breath before wiping his face against her stomach, letting his tongue riff along the edge of her underwear before he rubs his lips down the warmth of the fabric.

 

* * *

 

 

She considers exactly how long she has actually been waiting for this as he touches her... for him to own up to everything he's been implying and holding over her for years now.

For her to just accept that completely loving him (despite all the logical reasons as to why she just shouldn't) is so fucking inevitable that his mouth rubbing between her legs just finally feels like, God, completion. And how stupid is that?

When he skims the last of the fabric down her hips the graze of his hands thrums a feeling through her lungs and into her gut that she can really only remember having felt once before. And even as she knows it's an awfully romanticized and probably immature feeling to have, she can't help it.

Her fingers trace through his hair, digging in as his mouth traces a path up her thigh. “When we met...”

He's _laughing_. Jackass. He knows exactly what she's thinking and he's got the audacity to just... laugh. She could feel miles of guilt for everything they've ever put their exes through when it comes to the highs and lows of the Lightman  & Foster Psychological Adventure...

But he's chuckling pleasure along her skin as he licks and nips at her thigh and finally ( _Jesus_ , about goddamn time) slips a finger into her. “I know.”

She doesn't believe in love at first sight and neither does he.

She believes in infatuation at first sight, interest and obsession, but not _this_ kind of love.

He believes nothing on first sight, especially not the possibility of what he (finally) has in his hands.

No wonder it's taken the both of them near ten years to get here.

 

* * *

 

 

He's holding himself back as he stills his hips and she can tell there's more than just lust to the shiver that takes him over, sinks his weight down onto and deeper into her. It's in his arms and his face and in how roughly he rasps his stubble between her breasts as a groaning chokes up from somewhere deep in his chest. His lungs are grappling against any attempt he makes to actually breathe evenly and she can't blame him in the least because she's whimpered a few of her own tripped little pants into his ear. Both her hands catch against his face and when she draws his eyes up to meet hers she loses her smile to the intensity of his doubt, his suspicious fear as he breathes out roughly through his nose and stares her down.

His eyes are usually so color twisted gorgeous.

Now they're just like muddy mingled paint and confused as he shakes his head at her. “Gill.”

“Let it go, Cal,” she whispers it quietly, keeping it held mid-air between their mouths. “I want you here.”

“Y'think that - ”

“I want _you_ ,” she interrupts while digging him deeper and tighter with her legs and her arms curling on him even as she turns her mouth into his stubbled jaw and moans, “right here.”

The sound he makes in his throat, face finding the curve between her neck and shoulder, it's a sound she's pretty sure she's _never_ heard Cal Lightman make – and she's heard a hell of a lot of lusty little noises come off him. Maybe not always directed at her, but she's heard well enough of them to know.

This is different. This is frighteningly separate from his usual impishness.

And it's so... _honest_.

Because it's gratification and pleasure and accepted pain at the same time that it's heat and humility and a hell of a lot of things that he wouldn't necessarily let anyone else in the world hear and especially when it makes him sound a little weak as he drives his hips tighter into hers. The shift of movement makes her moan enough - let alone the fact that he groans his appreciation into her jaw and then lifts his head so that he can watch her face as his movements continue. His thrusts are incrementally slow and intentionally deep and long and teasing. Exactly what she'd expect from him when he feels like he's lost the upper hand and he has to somehow, even by cheap shots, level himself back up over her. Because he's still the absolutely cocky and wonderfully self righteous son of a bitch she's let herself fall in love with so, really, had she expected anything else?

But, Christ, she has actually let herself go there. Hasn't she?

Let herself love him despite every damn annoying little bout of tactless, self aggrandizing, pretentious and puerile bull -

“Don't, Gill,” he breathes it over her roughly, one of his hands bracing against her forehead with a tender warmth as he watches her face and shakes his head into kissing her chastely. “Don't block me.”

“I'm not,” she moans it loudly out as he grins, jacking his hips tighter into hers as her chest arches up into his and she lets her nails scrape onto his shoulders.

A shrug takes him over as he searches over her face, his features more passive than either expects as he catches the brightness in the blue of her eyes and his grin shades a little more self conscious. “Think I don't know when you lock me out, love?”

“I'm your blind spot?” she asks as she skims her nails on sweated skin. “Hmmm?”

“Doesn't mean I don't see you,” he counters tightly, his throat constricting on the words before he lays a groan down her breasts. “Every minute. Every day.”

“Jesus,” she's kissing her exhalations along the side of his head, aiming her mouth down his neck and onto his shoulder as he drives harder into her, hips tighter and faster and rougher as he shivers on her. “Been practicing that line?”

“Truth doesn't need to be practiced, Foster.” It's the blatant clarity in his tone that has her biting down against his shoulder, clamping her teeth against muscle as his fingers find her clit and she moans the muscles of her body tighter around him. “Y'know that.”

 

* * *

 

 

It's nearly three in the morning when he just starts chuckling, the quiet echo of it low in his lungs before he turns his head into her hair and buries his face. She can't help sleepily smiling a breathy sound of amusement back as he fists his hand in her hair and exuberantly chucks his body sideways into hers, his nose rubbing up under her ear. He curls around her even as she stays on her back, stretching into how comfortably he lets her slope her head onto his arm.

“What exactly are you so happy about?” she murmurs it out semi accusingly even though, were she pressed, she'd admit to being pretty damn happy herself.

His laughter hums down her throat and she lets him nudge her head angling as he scrubs his face into her neck, rashing his stubble against flushed skin just to tease at her. “Think I've a right to be smug. Got a naked Foster in my bed, I do.”

Well, that's entirely true and his hand stroking from her stomach and up her ribs to ride his fingertips on her sternum is more than a reminder, the movement has her snugging tighter into the touch. She's completely naked, physically and openly turning a look toward him that's as unguarded as she can manage, sated and pleased and more comfortable that she'd expected as her fingers lift back into the way he draws his head up. Her smile flares out as she realizes how intensely he's studying her, how tightly he's watching the reaction of her skin to his touch as he swipes his fingers back down and presses along her stomach, lays his hand onto her thigh and squeezes. Her fingers find his mouth, touch along his lips, let him kiss something besides her mouth.

“Alec and Zoe have every right to hate us sometimes.” She can't help the slight self scolding or the accusation, a measure of guilt still trapped up inside her as she lets him ridge his short nails against the inside of her thigh. “The first six months? The first year after we met?”

A chafed and sardonic laugh huffs past his lips, a noise that wears enough of something near shame that she knows he's already considered this very thought before. “We tag teamed against 'em, didn't we? You were my new best friend, my pal. Zo hated it.”

“God, Alec was so jealous of you.” Gill rattles off and loses her breath slightly as he grips his fingers into her inner thigh and pulls at her, leading her leg up between his so that he can tangle them up and lean tighter along the side of her. “Never breathed a word of it, though.”

“O'course not,” he snorts out, eyes flinching thin as he cocks his head over hers and finally meets her eyes. “You woulda heard it.”

Her head presses back into his arm as she thumbs pressure along his jaw, eyes drifting closed into how warmly trapped they are along each other. “I heard more than enough in his silence.”

“Why we talkin' about them?” Cal questions softly, the hush of his voice thrumming over her as his thigh rises between hers and his jaw dips to press sidelong to her cheek. “Should be about us.”

“You don't think that's a little selfish?”

“I am selfish, Foster,” he chuckles into her ear, the laughter true but the tone a shade deprecating, rueful and dark as he rubs a kiss on her ear.

“No, you aren't.” Her argument is sharp and uncompromising and she blinks her eyes back open when his head juts up in response, a smirk lacing his lips and a brow arched as though he's just realizing how defensive of him she can to be. “I can't wait another ten years to hear it, Cal.”

“You won't. I swear.” He doesn't look away from her as he says it but it means more to her that he says it clearly, staccato and sure into the stillness in the room.“Gillian, I promise.”

She lifts her fingertips against his lips again so that she can trace against his mouth and he's squinting over her, searching for a response she doesn't necessarily have.

“You believe me?” Cal questions past her fingers, his hand flattening out on her stomach and pressing down to demand an answer.

He really never been able to mislead her when speaking promises out loud.

She's always heard every intention anyhow. “I do.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Mornin'.” He can feel his face go sheepishly flushed as he forces himself farther into the brightening living room, tagging his fingers against her mussy hair as he steps around the coffee table. “How long you been up?”

“Since six.” Emily shrugs up into his hushed watching, a grin on her that goes beyond smug or pleased with herself. She's right pleased, she is. Innocently though. Happily so. And he can't help but grin as she drops her smile back down over the puzzle and hums consideration before exhaling. “My butt got numb.”

“And how's it now?”

She nods once as both her elbows lean onto the table, her back folded forward while her legs are drawn up under her still, all the waved length of her hair full around her head like a sleep-hazed halo. “Tingly.”

“Sensational,” he mocks lightly, waving a hand toward the puzzle as he flops hard into the cushions beside her. His hand unconsciously and casually tucks the blanket she has littered around her tighter along her side. “Almost done, yeah?”

“Half.” Emily murmurs as she fingers against the fabric blankly and turns her head toward him, a smile gradually curving her lips. “You want coffee?”

“Love some.” Cal scuffs his palm warmly up and down her back as she stretches up from the awkward angle, her shifting as she stands reminding him how tall and lanky and long she is, how much more like her mother she's becoming as she ages. “Em? Thank you.”

“For coffee?” She drops the leftover blanket into his lap and he bunches it under his arms, cradles the warmth into his chest as he snugs lower.

“For not sayin' 'I told you so'.” The words follow plaintively after her, obvious appreciation and adoration in how gentle they are, how sincere he's being.

“I glory in my victories.” She tells him perkily, her head lifting as she shakes her hair from her face and heads for the kitchen. “I don't gloat.”

He leans over the table, brow furrowing up as he studies the empty space and the unfinished image before his hand hovers toward the scatter of loose pieces. “Opposite of the way your mum does things, in'it?”

“Hey – don't.”

His body startles straight, hands shot up into the air as he grins at her accusatory point and the way she's waggling a finger toward him and the unfinished puzzle. “Don't what?”

 

* * *

 

 

She feels the smile rise from her lips to her eyes, leans the front of her body sleepily into the door frame as she watches the two of them. Emily is remarkably like her father, it's true. In looks and acts, in heart and sopping sarcasm. There's still such an unencumbered sweetness to her, though – something she knows that Cal has only ever tried to protect and shield because it's the leftover lingering of her childish innocence. It's the thing that remains even though her face and body has aged so damn much in the decade that Gillian's spent watching her from the sidelines.

It's not like she hasn't surreptitiously (and sharply jealously) watched them huddle up and silently declare their alliance untouchable by the world.

The two of them are... flawless in their respective adoration.

And she wants to keep them both, she realizes – hungrily and for as long as possible.

Sometimes she considers herself his best friend – and regardless of what happened hours before she'd still considers it to be, mostly, true. Sex does nothing to change the fact that, despite how easily they can fit their knives into each others ribs and twist, they cannot ever be less than what they've always been to each other. And they've _always_ been there for the other. However, most times she realizes that Emily is the only best friend he's ever utterly trusted in.

And that makes her flush warm, her smile now tentative but all full of unintentional affection.

“Em made coffee.” he slacks back on the couch, his voice gentle and surprisingly hushed in the morning hours as his daughter frowns over the yet unfinished puzzle. “Interested?”

“I'll get there.” she affirms just as lightly, letting her head rest into the solid framing as she quirks an amused look over his fuzzy ratted slippers and back up.

There's something patiently settled in him, something unexplainably controlled and still as he flashes her a broad grin and then slinks lower into the cushions with a charming wiggle. She can't help but notice his hands as they spread against his thighs and then roll so that his palms are up in some sort of unspoken offer or subtle invitation. And she sees that shift as though it's an impossible gift, actually. One that gives her unguarded entrance to that silent pact of Lightman Defense. Somehow he's allowed her an alliance to the unbreakable deal he's got with his daughter.

“I'll get it.” Emily offers as she drags her eyes off the puzzle and reaches for her own mug.

“It's okay, Emily. I can - ”

“Need a refill anyhow.” The teen is already stretched up and shrugging it off like it's nothing and early morning puzzles with the woman who's spent the night in her father's bed is the norm. “Don't let him finish that without me.”

It's not that that she was in _his_ bed, she realizes. Not for Emily.

It's that _she_ was in his bed. And that melts a warmth over her that makes the moment more important to her than maybe any other that she's had with this girl in ten years or so.

“Cream, please.”

Emily just blanks her a wry look. “I know that, Gill.”

The wink he offers as Emily leaves the room is far more innocent than it usually would be, more affectionate than if he'd just been acting silly or teasing at her. It's more legitimate somehow, as he slumps low on his couch with tattered bunny slippers bridged against the edge of the coffee table and both palms still openly relaxed as an offering. She can't help but step into that offer because she's been waiting endless years for an invitation that's quite so quietly and subtly honest.

“And you thought she'd be smug,” Gill accuses mockingly but soft.

“Not til after you leave, love.” He digs his hand into the shirt she's stolen as she moves into his space, the span of his fingers curling up fabric as he tugs at her and pulls down on her balance. “Doin' a happy little jig in the kitchen right now, I assure you.”

Her head cocks as she leans over him but refuses the way he's trying to pry her into his lap. “I doubt that.”

“I don't.” Cal smiles up into her leaning, lets her press her slow moving palm flat to the rise of his cheekbone so that the heel of her hand is catching up against his jaw. “She adores you. Always has.”

“I adore her.” The admittance has her crumbling a little into his pull, letting him shift a foot down so that he can hook her down and flop her half tumbling into the cushions. “Always have.”

He can't help himself from being silly and elated and oddly energetic as he shifts to face her, his hands uncontrolled as they crave her closer. In moments he's got her pried up close into his chest and he's turned on the couch and his knee is up between them but he's managed to draw her leg up to bridge over it. Suddenly she's thanking God that she pulled her jeans on as she laughs into how unabashedly and surprisingly happy he looks as he leans his head closer and nudges his jaw up, implies something in silence as he lifts her a crooked smirk.

It's not in his eyes though. And he knows it. Knows she knows it.

Well, he taught her that, hadn't he?

Taught her how to see everything in him so that they were closer to even ground?

“We all right?” he questions tentatively, fidgeting at the buttons on his pilfered shirt as he knuckles the fabric into her skin. He can't meet her eyes then, can't lift his head from this innocent fidget of worry.

She doesn't think he even realizes that there are multiple moments in their lives wherein she finds him utterly and undeniably adorable.

He's no innocent – he'll tell the world that himself.

But he's so guileless sometimes, impeachable in how selfless he can sometimes be in regards to her.

Always when it comes to her. Reflexes and movements and motions change, only in regards to her.

“I'm more than all right, Cal.” Gill traces how tightly flexed his wrist is as he tugs at a button, lifts a smirk that lightens his eyes in pleasure as she nods. “You all right?”

“Needed to ask.”

She laughs into the chippy explanation, how rapidly and breathlessly it's launched between them. “You can ask any time.”

He only shrugs once, that grin sparking up brighter all over his face. “You all right, then?”

“Cal.”

He yelps a little noise into the pinch she digs on his tattooed forearm, grunting as his hand flexes into the shirt she's wearing before he jerks her close and drops his eyes onto her lips. “Y'said any time.”

Not subtle, this little exploration of her mouth, his eyes focused as he studies her lips and licks at his own. She's never accused Cal Lightman of being subtle, though. His concept of a light touch weighs about the same as a Baby Grand.

“You're going to make me crazy, aren't you?” She asks as he groans his mouth closer but doesn't close the deal, doesn't fold into the way she's obviously laying her tone lusher and quieter and intentionally sensual.

“Seems I've managed already. Crazy stupid lettin' a bloke like me in those knickers, huh?”

She disregards his tone, lifting her head higher so that she can arch him a demanding glance, “Speaking of?”

“Of stupid?” He feigns innocence, brushing his lips once across hers. “Or crazy?”

She must be stupid. Stupid crazy. Because he is eight out of ten levels of insane when it comes to her. She knows this in her head. Doesn't much care as he finally leans a kiss into her momentary and mulled quietness, his tongue pressing between her lips and skidding her teeth as he catches along her jaw and tips her mouth higher into his. She feels the groan break past his throat as she slicks their tongues together in response and her hands catch on him, tug him leaning over her as she sinks into the cushions and lets him make the kiss hungrier. He's got a fantastic mouth on him, always has. Even when being a wise-ass (or just an ass in general) she's always appreciated the sharpness of that mouth, the honesty in it and the way it moves, where it leads her.

After letting him wander it all over her body, she's got a whole new appreciation for its previously unseen (unfelt) talents as well.

Gill draws the kiss slow and breaks it up into smaller increments so they can breathe, so she can murmur against them, “Where are they?”

He grins into the kiss that she begs onto his lips, lets it hum into a delightful laugh as he slicks his tongue from hers and meets her eyes, chin high. “M'not tellin'.”

Audacious son of a bitch.

She knows he's not lying. She knows, for a fact, she's not _ever_ getting that particular pair of underwear back.

“You're shameless.”

“Me?!” His teeth are still plaintively nipping along her bottom lip, his tongue still soothing after them as his hand manages to clandestinely twist the blanket that Emily had left over her leg. “You're the one not wearin' your panties, Foster.”

“Oi!” Emily's tone is sharp but playfully bright as she steps into the room, extra large coffee mugs curled in her palms as she nods over the both of them. “Not an acceptable breakfast topic.”

She's surprised and yet not at all affronted by how possessively he curls her down into his side, letting his head drift low along her shoulder so that his voice brushes a feigned petulance on her collarbone as he pouts at his daughter, “I haven't yet made 'er my breakfast topic. Seems there's a child in the house.”

She does her best to ignore how spiced warm and familiar and perfect he smells when she's so inherently close to his skin, so accepted as an extension of him as he curves them closer.

It doesn't work. She doesn't necessarily want to ignore it. Doesn't need to.

So she just lifts her face into the side of his neck and sighs out the last of the air in her lungs.

“Puzzle. Finish it.” The teenager seems perfectly comfortable in just plopping down onto the floor on the opposite side of the table, the mug cupped up in both hands so that the steam can cloud her face as she blinks between the two of them. “Both of you.”

She sighs again, letting her head rub into how comfortable he seems in just keeping her tucked up close to himself. “I need to get to the office, Emily.”

“You don't.” The girl's knowledge of their lives and lies is insurmountable in moments like these and Gill just blinks amazement into how sure comfortably Emily's voice is in countering her. “Not yet.”

“I have a meeting at - ”

“You're fired.” Cal breathes the words along her ear, takes his daughter's side against her argument in a teasing that has his hands tucking her closer. “Takes care of that.”

“You can't fire me, Cal.” Gill turns her head and her exasperation in his direction, near instantly losing all her fight (not that there'd really been all that much) into how smugly he's grinning up at her, how sparked up his eyes seem now that he has a proverbial partner in being a pain in her ass.

“C'mon, darling.” He brushes a kiss on her cheekbone and she can see the half swallowed smile Emily turns over the both of them as she uses her coffee mug to hide the rest of her amusement. “It's just a puzzle. Won't take long, not b'tween the three of us.”

She's broken by that, any resolve she may have had utterly shattered. Because Emily is actually smiling like someone turned her sunshine on even as she stares down at the puzzle and pretends (horribly) not to notice them. And he's laughing quietly up his throat as the implied dual weight of what he's said strikes her speechless and makes her pin a half glare on him. This puzzle, this unfinished thing between them, it's almost whole. And the bare implication that it's made complete by the three of them? Hell, he knows exactly what he's doing. Brilliant little shit. He's completely impossible.

He winks at her again and this time it's every inch of his teasing and playfulness as he suddenly leans past her and energetically picks up one of the pieces, dances it around below his daughter's nose before plopping it into place.

“You're such an ass.” Emily mutters as she frowns over the piece he's placed.

Gillian can't necessarily argue it. He is, really. And what's worse is that he knows it, exploits it.

But he's a hundred times more than that as he chuckles and slacks back once again, his hand stroking heat long down the line of her spine as she leans in to help his daughter.

She can willingly accept that he's an (im)perfect fit.

Clean edges would never have worked for them anyhow.


End file.
